Esōes Cosmetics is using cosmetics to fight drug-facilitated sexual assault and violence.
After 12 years of working in gender-based violence prevention, entrepreneur Joy Hoover was disheartened to see that rates of violence were not decreasing but instead on the rise. Today, about one in three women worldwide experience intimate partner violence or (non-partner) sexual violence in their lifetime. For Hoover, this fact is not just a statistic but something she feels firsthand: Her mother-in-law died at the hands of her abuser in 2013, and she’s worked with more than 10,000 survivors professionally.
Inspired by her work, Hoover started thinking about creating a tool to keep people safe. In 2021, her then-4-year-old daughter playfully suggested doing something with lipstick, and the idea resonated. And so, in 2022, Las Vegas-based Esōes Cosmetics (pronounced like S.O.S.) was born with a mission to use cosmetics as a vehicle for safety.
Esōes’s signature product, a lipgloss packaged in a case that includes built-in roofie test strips and a panic button, is the only cosmetic on the market with built-in personal safety features. The panic button connects to an app and can contact emergency services, send texts, make calls, send the user’s location, and play an alarm.
“When I would speak in huge groups of women, I would be like, 'Who carries mace?' And no one would raise their hands. So I was like, 'Well, who carries lipstick?' And everyone raised their hands,” Hoover says.
The life-saving makeup works like this: Open the bottom compartment of the lipgloss, which extends about an inch to reveal a test strip, and add a drop of your drink. The test strips are similar to a pregnancy test. If one line appears, drugs have been detected; if two lines appear, you’re in the clear. Since the test strips are integrated into the case and require only a small amount of liquid, it’s possible to carry and use discreetly. A starter pack, available on the Esōes website, includes your choice of lipgloss or liquid lipstick, plus the case, and test strips. It costs $65, but refills of tests strips alone cost just over $3.
Since Esōes launched in July of 2023, Hoover has heard from a user who found herself in an unsafe situation and used it to discreetly contact her partner. Her own daughter reached for the panic button when a substitute teacher who’d been bullying her refused to let her leave a classroom.
“I was trying to look at violence as a whole, from my daughter's safety at school to a trafficking survivor or someone living with their active abuser,” Hoover says. “How could we get as many of the safety features as possible?”
In Hoover’s mind, the location piece is key. The Esōes app updates a user's location every 10 seconds, and can share it with both select contacts and emergency services. The feature was inspired by her previous work at an anti-trafficking and gender-based violence nonprofit, The Cupcake Girls. Hoover recalls one client who reached out while attempting to escape her trafficker. She was actively overdosing and passed out mid-call before she could explain where she was. Luckily, a bystander picked up the phone and directed the ambulance there, but Hoover couldn’t shake the idea that it was vital for emergency services to be able to access a caller’s location.
In July of 2024, Hoover's air conditioning malfunctioned, and smoke began to fill her house. She pressed the panic button on her Esōes lipgloss, which connected her to an emergency responder via text. Since the Esōes app was already tracking her location, the fire department was able to arrive in six minutes. Firefighters told her that if they'd been delayed another 15 minutes, they wouldn't have been able to save the house.
The idea to add drink testing strips also came from personal experience. “I had been roofied before, but I didn’t understand all the statistics,” Hoover says. Data on the exact prevalence of drink spiking is limited and mixed—scientists hesitate to draw conclusions on self-reported data, and since most people who suspect they’ve been drugged don’t go to the hospital for testing, the estimates we do have are hard to verify. But studies suggest that (depending on the sample) between 7 and 22 percent of people report having had something put in their drink. “When I was looking at the market, there are fentanyl strips, but there’s no drink strip,” says Hoover.
Hoover saw a patent for roofie-detecting nail polish that never went to market and found the scientist on LinkedIn, messaging him for eight months before he agreed to a call. The first iteration of test strips could test beer and seltzers for Benzodiazepines (a.k.a. benzos). Today, Esōes testing strips work in all drinks (save for those with milk in them) and will soon test for ketamine and GHB
“One of the things that we see with violence is it’s not only the act; it's also not being believed, not being helped, not being trusted. And our test strips can act as evidence,” Hoover says.
Esōes also works with bars, clubs, and colleges to provide education around the nuances of gender-based violence and how to intervene. The idea is to prepare people to respond to violence so that when it happens, they can overcome the fight or flight response. Esōes often partners with bars to distribute branded test strips, an effort Hoover is hopeful will expand with new legislation. In March, a California law passed requiring certain businesses that sell alcohol to have test strips available and signs letting patrons know. It went into effect on July 1, 2024, and currently applies to more than 2,000 businesses in the state. Hoover hopes other states will follow suit.
In June, Hoover was named one of 20 recipients of Botox Cosmetic and IFundWomen’s Grants for women entrepreneurs. She’ll receive a $25,000 grant, plus coaching and mentorship. She plans to use the funding to expand Esōes’s test strip offerings and launch new products, potentially chapstick or a watch-mounted panic button.
“Safety looks very different for everyone. How do we make sure that women of every color, lipstick wears of all genders, everyone can align with [our mission]?”